Tech

JBL OnBeat Venue LT: First Lightning Speaker Dock Delivers Huge Sound

There have been three iOS devices released with the new Lightning connector, but until now, there were no speaker docks with which to charge them. Enter the first Lightning-equipped speaker dock, the JBL OnBeat Venue LT. It charges your iPad 4, iPhone 5 and iPad Mini, and plays audio either directly through the Lightning port, over an auxiliary port or via Bluetooth.

The OnBeat Venue Lightning is similar to its non-Lightning predecessor, with smooth, rounded styling and a slide-out drawer where you dock your device. It was easy to pair up my iPhone 5 with the OnBeat's Bluetooth. There's no remote control included with this unit, but you can control the unit with your iOS device. However, controlling the volume while using a device plugged into the auxiliary input is not possible without walking across the room.

Once it was paired up and we fired up some music, this relatively small speaker filled the room with sound. Its 30-watt amplifier allows the drivers inside to pump out a tremendous amount of audio goodness, with very strong bass, clear and natural sounding midrange and crispy highs that go up into the dog-whistle range. This 16-inch-wide dock sounds excellent, and for those who want their music loud to the point of aural pain, this Lightning dock brings the thunder. Even when we turned it up to earsplitting levels, there was barely any distortion at all.

Next, we tried the Lightning connector, and the iPhone 5 snapped into it easily. However, switching from Bluetooth mode to direct mode in the dock was a bit awkward, where the music stopped and we needed to start it again. However, we were impressed with the lack of a difference in sound quality when playing back via Bluetooth compared with music playing directly from the iPhone via the Lightning connector. In fact, the quality of the dock connector's sound probably surpasses the quality of the compressed music most people will have on their iOS devices.

JBL offers its MusicFlow iOS app free, but we noticed the iPhone version wasn't as stable as we'd like, crashing when we tried to scroll through our music collection too quickly. We also noticed there was no simple way to scroll directly to an alphabetical location, like you can do with most other music apps on iOS. We have to give the iPhone version of the MusicFlow app a thumbs-down now, in hopes that it will soon be updated.

Not to worry, though — you can use the dock without JBL's custom app, playing any audio from your iOS device through the speaker, whether you're using Bluetooth, directly connected, or are connecting any audio device via its 3.5mm auxiliary input. Some commenters on JBL's website complained that radio apps would time out after 10 minutes when docked in the Lightning connector, but we played Pandora Radio via the iPhone 5 for most of an afternoon without a hitch. We weren't able to reproduce the problems that caused those complaints.

The JBL OnBeat Venue Lightning cost $199.95, but we think that's a good value given the huge and crisp sound coming out of its speakers. It doesn't sound as spectacular as the highest-end docks we've heard, but it certainly delivers its money's worth in faithful music reproduction.

JBL OnBeat Venue LT Speaker Dock

JBL OnBeat Venue LT with iPhone 5 on Board

Here's the dock with an iPhone 5 plugged into its Lightning connector.

JBL OnBeat Venue LT, Top View

Top view shows the controls you can use instead of those on your iOS device. Or, you can use them to control audio devices connected to the Aux input.

JBL OnBeat Venue LT, Back

Those two bass ports in the back contribute to this unit's loud and tight bass response.

JBL OnBeat Venue LT with MusicFlow App

Here we're using JBL's MusicFlow iOS app, which was unstable when we scrolled through our music too quickly. This needs to be fixed.

JBL OnBeat Venue LT Music and Movie Controls

On top left of the speaker, here's an input control and a couple of rough equalization buttons, labeled Music (like a "loudness" control), and Movie, which brightened up the sound.

JBL OnBeat Venue LT Power and Volume Controls

On the right of the unit, you'll find a rocker control for volume and the power button.

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